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Control freak
The term control freak was first used in the 1970s, a decade when the cultural Zeitgeist featured liberal social norms, which respected the live-and-let-live principle of "Do your own thing" in opposition to the social conformity required by traditional conservatism.Glaser, Kristin in The Radical Therapist (Penguin 1974) p. 246 Negative behavior flourishes in such a lawless atmosphere, and sociopaths and just plain rude and selfish people took full advantage of it. But trust and love and the community bonds of adults living as family, looking out for each other and making allowances for each other, flourish in it as well. This is the experience of the 60s; one which must be believed in and trusted, as it cannot be proved or even conveyed well with words. In comparison with this, all Straights and Squares were control freaks; hence a solid basis for the term's growth and widespread popularity outside of these circles. The phrase as used by Straights themselves, of course, bears little resemblance, and the influence of writers that praise the effectiveness of control freaks in business and warfare and every stupid thing you can think of are right here in Wikipedia's article. Proceed at your own risk. Control freaks are often perfectionistsMichelle N. Lafrance, Women and Depression (2009) p. 89 defending themselves against their own inner vulnerabilities in the belief that if they are not in total control they risk exposing themselves once more to childhood angst.Art Horn, Face It (2004) p. 53 Such persons manipulate and pressure others to change so as to avoid having to change themselves,Robin Skynner/John Cleese, Families and how to survive them (London 1994) p. 208 and use power over others to escape an inner emptiness.Robert Bly and Marion Woodman, The Maiden King (Dorset 1999) p. 141 When a control freak's pattern is broken, the controller is left with a terrible feeling of powerlessness but feeling their pain and fear brings them back to themselves.Patricia Evans, Controlling People (Avon 2002) p. 129 and p. 274 In terms of personality-type theory, control freaks are very much the Type A personality, driven by the need to dominate and control.Andrew Holmes/Dan Wilson, Pains in the Office (2004) p. 56 An obsessive need to control others is also associated with antisocial personality disorder.Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door (2005) p. 47 Abusive power and control is one of the symptoms of the clinical (not the pop psychology) diagnosis of Narcissism (WP) =Deleted from WP= Wikiführers Control freaks can consistently be found on many types of internet websites, especially supposedly "open" forums where regular people are outwardly encouraged to participate and contribute, only to be attacked, criticized, marginalized, censore, edited and even banned from participation if they knowingly or unknowingly refuse to play by the extensive list of "rules" for participation. Invariable, the "rules" are arbitrarily created, applied and enforced by the "old timer brigade" of long-time users that consider supposedly public websites their personal property, usually based upon their "seniority" of participation, but occasionally based upon their radical and obsessive desire to have their own way, even if it takes spending literally years of their supposedly precious and important lives arguing with other idiots to get it. Often, said control freaks will ban new or inexperienced contributors from participation if the consider said participation "disruptive", with no consideration of or recognition for the fact that they could avoid such disruptions by simply ignoring them. Also interesting is that they apparently do not consider their own responses to such "disruptive" behavior to be disrupting in any way. For example, if another contributor makes an edit they do not likely or approve of and therefore consider disruptive, ONLY the initial contribution is disruptive. Their own responses to it are not. Some would consider this dichotomy to be indicative of mental illness. Abusive relationship There are constant reports from around the world of people being murdered by control freaks who have been incensed by a partner exercising their natural right to end an unsatisfactory relationship. The reality chat shows of the Jerry Springer or Jeremy Kyle type regularly have couples where the one is a control freak who dictates what the other can wear, who they can talk to, where they can work, what family contact they can have. Some control freaks go so far as to keep their partners incommunicado by deliberately cutting off phone and internet services or even forcing them to get a new phone number every week in order that their friends cannot contact them. These partner-dominating control freaks have an inner immaturity that outlets as a childish urge to break a toy rather than let another child have it. Their motto is 'If I can't have you no-one will.' Other Control freaks may identify themselves by accusing others of being control freaks. This is a defense mechanism known as projection Psychological_projection. The target of these accusations might be those who do not wish to be controlled and offer resistance. It is worth noting that "Control freak" is not a disorder recognized by the APA American_Psychological_Association in their DSM-5 DSM-5. In psychology-related slang, control is the attempt to impose excessive predictability and direction on others or on events, often associated with lack of trust or insecurity, especially in a parent/child, partnership/relationship, manager/project, responsibility/dependency, or boss/subordinate context. In this context the term is a derogatory slang term sometimes used for extreme cases. In popular culture Speaking about Apple chairman Steve Jobs, author Alan Deutschman was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying: :"I don't know if there's a Wikipedia definition for 'control freak' but when they do that entry, Steve's picture should be next to it." *Monica Geller from Friends; also her mother Judy Geller *Doctor Elliot Reid from Scrubs *Susan Harper from My Family *Bree Van De Kamp, from Desperate Housewives *Sissy, from Code Lyoko *Marik Ishtar, from Yu-gi-oh! *Lois Wilkerson from Malcolm in the Middle * Janet from The Fresh Prince of Belair *Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest *Michael Scofield in Prison Break =Article= In the slang of psychology, the colloquial term control freak describes a person with a personality disorder characterized by undermining other people, usually by way of controlling behavior manifested in the ways that he or she acts to dictate the order of things in a social situation. Personality psychology In the study of personality psychology, people with certain personality disorders display characteristics involving their need to gain the compliance of and control over other people:Larsen, Randy J. and Buss, David M. Personality Psychology: Domains of Knowledge about Human Nature New York:McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2010. pp. 000-000. * People with antisocial personality disorder tend to display glibness, a type of superficial charm that provides them a grandiose sense of self-worth. Because of their callous and unemotional traits and shallow affect they are well suited to crime requiring deceitfulness, such as the confidence game ("con game" and "con job"), because they are adept at the psychological manipulation of people into complying with their dishonest requests, desires, and wishes. * People with histrionic personality disorder need to be the center of attention, to attract other people to themselves into disposable, personal relationships. * People with narcissistic personality disorder tend to display inflated self-importance, hypersensitivity to criticism, and a sense of entitlement, by which they persuade people's compliance with their requests. Controlling the behavior of other people, maintains the narcissist's self-esteem and protects the emotionally vulnerable true self — especially in the case of narcissistic parents, who see their children as extensions of themselves, and not as human beings with discrete personal identities.Rappoport, Alan, Ph. D.Co-Narcissism: How We Adapt to Narcissism. The Therapist, 2005 . Vulnerability Control freaks are often perfectionistsMichelle N. Lafrance, Women and Depression (2009) p. 89 defending themselves against their own inner vulnerabilities in the belief that if they are not in total control they risk exposing themselves once more to childhood angst.Art Horn, Face It (2004) p. 53 Such persons manipulate and pressure others to change so as to avoid having to change themselves,Robin Skynner/John Cleese, Families and how to survive them (London 1994) p. 208 and use power over others to escape an inner emptiness.Robert Bly and Marion Woodman, The Maiden King (Dorset 1999) p. 141 When a control freak's pattern is broken, the controller is left with a terrible feeling of powerlessness but feeling their pain and fear brings them back to themselves.Patricia Evans, Controlling People (Avon 2002) p. 129 and p. 274 Control freaks appear to have some similarities to codependents, in the sense that the latters' fear of abandonment leads to attempts to control those they are dependent on.David Stafford & Liz Hodgkinson, Codependency (London 1995) p. 131 Recovery for them entails recognizing that being a control freak helped paradoxically preserve codependency itself.Deb M., in Stepping Stones to Recovery from Codependency (1993) p. 61 In terms of personality-type theory, control freaks are very much the Type A personality, driven by the need to dominate and control.Andrew Holmes/Dan Wilson, Pains in the Office (2004) p. 56 An obsessive need to control others is also associated with antisocial personality disorder.Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door (2005) p. 47 In management In the corporate world, control freaks tend to publicly admonish their inferiors, especially during meetings.Andrew Buck — Meeting Behaviors: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly More positively, the term can also refer to someone with a limited number of things that they want done a specific way; professor of clinical psychology Les Parrott wrote that “Control Freaks are people who care more than you do about something and won't stop at being pushy to get their way”. There may be a fine line between being a detail-oriented manager, who likes to have things done 'right', and being a (destructive) control freak.Gillian Tett, Fool's Gold (London 2009) p. 165 Control freaks are usually a cause of micromanagement. In some cases, the control freak sees their constant intervention as beneficial or even necessary. This can be caused by feelings of separation or departure from a loved one; or by the belief that others are incapable of handling matters properly, or the fear that things will go wrong if they do not attend to every detail. In other cases, they may simply enjoy the feeling of power it gives them so much that they automatically try to gain control of everything and everyone around them. In history Wellington v. Napoleon Wellington as military commander was undoubtedly a hands-on micromanager, trusting his subordinates as little as possible, and showing many of the characteristics of the modern day control freak.Richard Holmes, Wellington: The Iron Duke (London 2003) p. 178 and p. 169 In 1811 he wrote that “I am obliged to be everywhere and if absent from any operation, something goes wrong … success can only be attained by attention to the most minute details”.Quoted in Michael Glover, Wellington as Military Commander (London 1968) p. 205 By contrast, Napoleon gave his marshals much more tactical freedom.Jac Weller, Wellington at Waterloo (London 1967) p. 21 At the critical meeting of the two generals at the Battle of Waterloo — where Wellington's close supervision contrasted strongly with the effective delegation of operational management by Napoleon to Marshall NeyJames Marshall-Cornwall, Napoleon as Military Commander (London 1967) p. 278 — it was at least arguably Wellington's control mania that played the decisive role in the Allied victory, justifying his claim the following day that “I don't think it would have been done if I had not been there”.Quoted in Glover, p. 204 Queen Victoria A series of three documentary programs on BBC2 in the UK in January 2013 called Queen Victoria's Children argued that Queen Victoria was a pathological control freak by the way she controlled the welfare of all her children.Queen Victoria's Children BBC2 January 2013 Steve Jobs and closed systems Steve Jobs was a perfectionist who favored the closed system of control over all aspects of a product from start to finish — what he termed the integrated over the fragmented approach.Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (2011) p. 564 and p. 513 As Steve Wozniak, his long-term collaborator and occasional critic, put it: "Apple gets you into their playpen and keeps you there.Quoted in Isaacson, p. 497 The triumph of the Windows PC over the Mac was a blow for that philosophy, a situation that was then reversed by the successes of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad – only for the Android challenge to reopen the debate."Isaacson, p. 513 and p. 497 See also * Authoritarian personality * Control (management) * Empire building * Freak * Full-spectrum dominance * Megalomania * Micromanagement * Mind control * Narcissism * Narcissism in the workplace * Narcissistic leadership * Narcissistic supply * Obsessive–compulsive personality disorder * Psychopathy in the workplace * Social control * Toxic leader * Toxic workplace * Workplace bullying * Workplace incivility References Further reading * E.A. Deuble & A. Bradley, It Has A Name!: How To Keep Control Freaks & Other Unhealthy Narcissists From Ruining Your Life (2010) * Mary L. Berg, The Joy of Being a Control Freak (2011) Wikipedia:Template:Narcissism Wikipedia:Template:Bullying Wikipedia:Template:Youth empowerment Wikipedia:Template:Workplace Links * http://www.ec-online.net/Knowledge/Articles/control.html * https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-is-2020/201604/5-signs-you-are-dealing-control-freak Category:Slang Category:Narcissism Category:Bullying Category:Workplace bullying Category:English phrases Category:Pejorative terms for people Category:Psychological abuse Category:Workplace Category:Control (social and political) Category:Pop psychology Category:Hippie culture Category:1970s culture